Colouring In Read Online Free Page B

chemical air freshener. I opened all the windows, looked through all the cupboards. In the kitchen everything appeared out of date, overused. I suppose I’ll have to re-equip the place: new machinery, new curtains and covers. In fact the whole house could do with re-decorating. And I’ll have to buy a car and apply for residents’ parking, all very tiresome. It’s not that I haven’t the money – I’ve more money than I need to spend. It’s just all very boring when there’s no one to help, to advise. All the same, I’m overwhelmingly glad to be back.
    The first morning home, not a thing in the fridge, I behaved like a New Yorker and went out to breakfast in the King’s Road. It was a warm sunny morning so I sat at a minuscule table on the pavement with my cappuccino and indifferent croissant, and felt a bit bleak. I took out my engagement book – nothing but empty pages, of course, since landing in England – and looked at the list of people whose telephone numbers I transfer every year, no matter for how long I haven’t seen them. Dan was at the top, his permanent place. He was the one I most wanted to see, I thought. My oldest friend. Great stretches of absence never made any difference to us. We’d just take up the reins again. He was always good at précising the time lost between us. I was never much good at that. I find it difficult suddenly to describe the most important thing that’s happened in the last few months, let alone years. So I just murmur about still being a bachelor, hope fading, well-paid job in air-conditioned Manhattan, and he gets the picture. I wouldn’t want to bore him with the ins and outs of strategic marketing for the oil company. So from me he gets merely tiny flashes of illumination in my life – an amazing weekend in the Hamptons, or the skiing trip in Colorado. His apparent deep interest sometimes spurs me to a few details.
    From him I get a great deal more. Much of it concerns whatever is his current play. It’s astonishing, his tenacity and determination. Ever since we left Oxford Dan’s been writing plays. Boosted by his stupendous success of Forward , he was convinced that he was a born playwright. The fact that not a single play has been produced since doesn’t seem to have daunted him. He spends months and months waiting for replies from theatre companies and producers, probably knowing in his heart that the news, if and when it ever does come, is not going to be good. Once or twice there’s been a flicker of hope: some director – perhaps out of kindness – suggesting there is a future for a play. But in fact that future is always a return to the bottom drawer. No matter, says Dan. He never blames the state of theatre in general, or changing fashions, or lack of willingness to invest in plays: he blames only himself. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that one obviously wasn’t good enough. So on to the next one. Must do better.’ Thank God he doesn’t rely on writing for a living.
    I admire his persistence so much. The pathos he exudes moves me frequently, though God forbid he should ever be aware of such thoughts. In the same circumstances, I would have given up years ago. I haven’t seen any of the most recent attempts, but he sent me three scripts a couple of years ago. I read them very carefully, wondering what it was that meant they didn’t work. I’m no expert: couldn’t quite put my finger on it. They’re well constructed, witty, usually an original slant on some issue of the day. And yet … they never quite come alive. In the way that Forward most certainly did. So what happened? Is it that some people have within them just a single work? Or, at least, a single work of lasting and profound effect? Like Salinger? I asked Dan about that once. He thought the idea wasn’t up to much. ‘If you can write one excellent thing,’ he said, ‘you have the capacity to write another. It’s just a matter of unlocking the magic door again.’ He always asks my